


The Little Girl With An Inner Dragon

by tielan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Female Character of Color, Race, Remyth Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The other little girls wanted to be fairies for the class performance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Girl With An Inner Dragon

The other girls wanted to be fairies for the class performance. Pastel pinks and greens and yellows and blues with fluffy wings and satiny skirts that showed off their pale skin and hair of yellow and brown and red.

Teacher turned from Hannah and flashed the big smiling smile. “What colour do you want, Mei-Lin?”

She wanted red. Strong red like the colour of joy - like the colour of her blood when she fell out of the tree, which _gong-gong_ said was the colour of everyone’s blood and she shouldn’t be ashamed because they were different on the outside. _It is in the spirit - in the heart of our beings that we are the same, Mei-Lin._

“Well, we don’t have any red,” said Teacher, getting the funny look she sometimes did when Mei-Lin asked the questions Sara said were Stupid Because Everyone Knows That - except that Mei-Lin didn’t know them, and so she asked so she would know. “There’s some yellow left. You could be a yellow fairy.”

“But I don’t want to be a fairy at all,” she explained, careful to pronounce the words as Teacher did, as the other children did. “I want to be a dragon.”

In the classroom behind her, someone sniggered. Teacher went still, and a line creased her brow. “We don’t have dragons in this performance, Mei-Lin. You’ll just have to be a fairy like the other girls.”

She walked back to her chair with the yellow wings and sat down.

Two seats away, Sara leaned over to Michelle and whispered loudly, “What kind of person wants to be a dragon, anyway? Dragons are evil and monstrous.”

Michelle giggled. “So it’s perfect for her!”

Mei-Lin stared at her hands, at her skin which the other children said was yellow and thought of the dragon dancing in the street in the New Year, chasing the pearl of prosperity. She thought of the Four Dragons of the Eastern Sea, bringing rain to the parched villagers when the Jade Emperor had turned his face from the earth. She thought of her birthday, in the Year of the Dragon.

Her _gong-gong_ always said she had a dragon inside her - luck-bringer, rain-giver, prosperous, fortunate, and blessed.

But the class performance had no dragons, and so the little black-haired fairy donned her yellow wings and dutifully sang and recited with the others.


End file.
